1. Field of the Invention
Example embodiments of the present invention relate to an apparatus, system, method, and recording medium, each capable of identifying information embedded in image data or a printed document.
2. Description of the Background
Recently, to enhance the security or added-value of image data, supplemental information may be embedded in the image data using electronic watermark or dot pattern technology. Such supplemental information embedded in the image data may include, for example, copyright, security, or confidential information associated with the image data.
To precisely identify supplemental information embedded in image data, one background technology repeatedly adds a pattern corresponding to the supplemental information to the image data.
For example, as illustrated in FIG. 12A, when a bit string of “101101” is embedded in image data as supplemental information, a sequence of dot patterns representing “101101” may be repeatedly added to the image data as supplemental information so that the supplemental information can be precisely identified even if a portion of the repeated patterns cannot be properly extracted due to image noise or other factors. In this example illustrated in FIG. 12A, the information bits 0 and 1 are respectively embedded as dot patterns illustrated in FIG. 12B.
In the process of identifying such supplemental information, the above-described background technology acquires pattern data while the image data is being scanned, and converts the acquired pattern data to the supplemental information by a predetermined method. Accordingly, when the same pattern is repeatedly added to the image data, the processing speed may decrease. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 12A, when the dot-pattern sequence corresponding to “101101” is repeatedly added to the image data, the above-described background technology acquires all patterns readable from the scanned area, analyzes the acquired patterns to obtain one pattern specifying the supplemental information, and converts the obtained pattern to the supplemental information, thus resulting in a reduced processing efficiency.